In the production of glass fiber products such as insulation, duct board, reinforcement fibers, and the like, there is produced a considerable amount of waste or scrap glass. Much of the scrap glass cannot be reintroduced directly into the melting furnace because the glass, immediately upon formation, has applied to its surface one or more surface coatings such as sizes or binders. As a result mere reintroduction into the furnace, without pretreatment, results in glass batch contamination. Accordingly, it has been the general practice to discard scrap glass with attendant energy and material losses, disposal problems, and the like.
There now has been developed a scrap glass recovery process directed to the removal of such surface coatings to the extent that direct introduction of the cleaned glass scrap into the melting furnace is practical.